The charges brought against Bob and Maureen McDonnell this week did more than just shed light on how a promising politician can fall from grace.

They also, in part, told a tale familiar to many Americans of how the housing crisis quickly turned a family’s financial fortunes upside down.

The 43-page federal indictment released Tuesday alleges that the former GOP Virginia governor and his wife illegally accepted gifts from businessman Jonnie Williams.

In making their case, prosecutors highlight the role played by a soured investment in several Virginia Beach properties that led the couple in search of cash to pay their bills. The details read like a case study of how the housing boom led investors and families to make real estate investments they struggled to maintain and then couldn’t get rid of when the market crashed.

For many investors and homeowners there were few options other than foreclosure and possibly bankruptcy. Prosecutors allege that the McDonnells, who maintain they did nothing illegal, were able to use the governor’s perch to help manage the losses through the largesse of Williams, who in turn was eager for the McDonnells’ help in promoting his dietary supplements business. The couple is also charged with accepting other inappropriate gifts, such as clothing.

“We just went through probably the worst economic downturn in all of our lifetimes so everyone got hurt — including obviously the governor,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

From around 2009 to 2012, two Virginia Beach properties owned by MoBo Real Estate Partners — a Virginia LLC that McDonnell had 50 percent financial interest in — required as much as $60,000 per year in mortgage payments and expenses. Rental income was not enough to cover those bills, and the McDonnells were unable to sell off the properties as home prices fell.

Virginia Beach home values dropped more than 26 percent from their peak in June 2007 to the bottom in early 2011, according to past data from the Virginia Realtors Association.

Feeling the strain, the McDonnells began to turn to family and friends for loans.

“MoBo relied on loans, including from family and friends, to make up the difference,” the indictment claims. “MoBo explored the possibility of selling the two properties without success as their values were declining. MoBo also began to explore refinancing the heavily leveraged properties.”

Then in May of 2011, Maureen McDonnell asked Williams for help.

According to the indictment, Virginia’s former first lady explained to the then-Star Scientific CEO that she and her husband were facing “severe financial difficulties.” She asked for a $50,000 loan, promising that she could “help” Williams’s dietary supplements company.

Williams agreed to lend them the money — a deal that was never put in writing.

But even with the hefty loan from Williams, the McDonnells were unable to dig themselves out of financial distress.

In February 2012, McDonnell pleaded in an email to his children: “Kids. Asking for help, need to rent the beach house at Sandbridge more. Willing to give your friends a discount for the times it’s tougher to rent.”

An attorney representing McDonnell did not respond to a request for comment.

The McDonnells were just two of many who invested in properties in Sandbridge — a community in Virginia Beach dotted with beach homes and vacation rentals — where homeowners look to get rental income from out-of-town vacationers who visit the coastal town.

“We still saw activity during that time frame, but it was definitely not as prolific as what you would have seen in [a] normal market when people are out, spending money, and they’re not worrying about spending money,” said one Virginia Beach real estate agent who declined to be named. “Vacation rentals definitely took a hit.”

Several real estate agents in the Virginia Beach area pointed out that Sandbridge homeowners took an especially hard fall because the community is saturated with rental beach homes and because it is located further south from other towns located along Virginia Beach.

The loan that the McDonnells received from Williams to seemingly help pay for costs associated with their real estate investmentsapparently is a key component of the prosecutors’ case.

The indictment states that part of the defendants’ efforts to “conceal the scheme” was their failure to disclose the personal loan from Williams on at least two occasions. In the fall of 2012, McDonnell did not list the loan from his friend on a personal financial statement that he filed with TowneBank.

Then, as part of a loan application filed around February 2013 when the McDonnells attempted to refinance their mortgages on two of their properties, the couple again did not disclose any liabilities to Williams. McDonnell corrected this a few days later.

Some lending experts say that this was a common oversight for many applicants.

“Unless they were dealing with a loan representative that was really digging at the situation — are you sure there’s not anything else, are you sure you don’t owe money to an individual — I see no way that a loan applicant would know to put that on a loan application,” said Todd Starr, a loan officer based in Virginia Beach.